Despite Shelley's assertion in his preface to his elegy Adonais that Keats had suffered from the savage criticism of Endymion (published April 1818)Mwhich, Shelley claimed, "produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind," and led to Keats' last, fatal illness—Keats himself described Endymion, in the same letter quoted above, as "slip-shod": "Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, & with that view asked advice, & trembled over every page, it would not have been written."